Brave New World

By Huxley, Aldous

Book Id: WPLBN0100000518
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 12.76 MB
Reproduction Date: 8/1/1932

Title:	Brave New World
Author:	Huxley, Aldous
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Fiction, Drama and Literature, Dystopia
Collections:	Authors Community, Science Fiction
Historic Publication Date:	1932
Publisher:	1932 (Chatto & Windus)

Member Page:	opensource opensource
Citation APA MLA Chicago Huxley, B. A. (1932). Brave New World. Retrieved from http://gutenberg.cc/

Description
The novel opens in London in AF 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian calendar). The society is illuminated by the activities of the novel's central characters, Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx, and others. Lenina, a hatchery worker, is socially accepted and contented, but Bernard, a psychologist in the Directorate of Hatcheries and Conditioning, is not. He is shorter in stature than the average of his Alpha caste—a quality shared by the lower castes, which gives him an inferiority complex. His intelligence and his work with hypnopaedia allow him to understand, and disapprove of, the methods by which society is sustained. Courting disaster, he is vocal and arrogant about his differences. Bernard is mocked by other Alphas because of his stature, as well as for his individualistic tendencies, and is threatened with exile to Iceland because of his nonconformity. His only friend is Helmholtz Watson, a lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering. The friendship is based on their feelings of being misfits (in the context of the World State), but unlike Bernard, Watson's sense of alienation stems from being exceptionally gifted, intelligent, handsome, and physically strong. Helmholtz is drawn to Bernard as a confidant.

Summary
Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley, and published in 1932. Set in London in the year AD 2540 (632 A.F.—"After Ford"—in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that are combined to profoundly change society. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with Island (1962), his final novel.

Excerpt
Brave New World's title derives from Miranda's speech in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I:[5] O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't. — William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll. 203–206[6]